Weather tracking by drones.

Agriculture satellites are used around the world to help assess crop health, yield, and facilitate environmental analysis to ensure farmers have all the details they need to best manage their farms. The different colors in the image tell a different story about what is happening with a farmer’s crops. Already, agriculture-ready drones are popping up for purchase, for the farmer who wants to use technology to gather information on his crops. Now, drones are flown into the atmosphere to uncover meteorological secrets critical to improving weather forecasts.

These drones could sample the atmosphere in difficult to reach, remote locations where weather data is scarce. Atmospheric measurements provided by radar, weather balloons and towers are good for forecasting a few days ahead, but not so good at predicting dynamic, hour-to-hour weather changes. Drone flights can be extremely important in places prone to sudden, violent storms.